Those anxiously awaiting patch 4.0.6 should be happy to know that this patch should be hitting the live servers tomorrow. This includes the redefining of how many players constitutes a “guild group”, fixes and adds to the “luck of the draw” buff, adds some balance to Tol Barad and Strand of the Ancients, makes Retributions mastery possibly their best stat, along with a plethora of other class and instance changes. This patch has seen a ton of revisions already – you can find the most current after the break – with more possible by the time it goes live. I’m pretty happy with the changes overall. We should see some class balance, random dungeon finder groups might be a little more manageable, and did I mention the buff to retribution? Continue on for the most recent patch notes (as of this posting) in their entirety.
Tag: 4.0.6
Daily Thoughts: It’s Not Christmas Anymore
Apparently today is the official day after the Christmas holiday time for my universe. Last night my significant other took down our tree and decorations in the midst of a living room cleaning frenzy, and today the tree at the office where I work is packed away into boxes to wait for the next year.
So, I’m now waiting for christmas again. Though, I sincerely hope it doesn’t take until december to find my presents, which apparently someone buried all over Azeroth. Yes, I’m talking about Archeology epics. This profession is a little soul-sucking, but I really want Zin’Rokh, the epic level 85 bind-to-account 2h weapon. Aside being a substantial upgrade for my ret main, would also look nice on my fury warrior and death knight once the paladin upgrades or finds a replacement. There is also a very nice healer trinket for my holy set or my resto shaman once he hits 85, and a caster ring, which lacks hit or spirit, making it a viable upgrade for my holy paladin, resto/ele shaman, or boomkin. The trinket and ring are also bind-to-account.
Although the grind to get any of these (which I haven’t yet, by the way) is pretty long, at least due to the nature of the BOA epics, only one toon needs to be an archeologist unless you really care about multiple toons getting the pets and mounts. Just last night I got the Fossilized Raptor mount and although it’s pretty cool, I have no desire to level archeology on any other toons. I’m glad I have the last of the fossil solves that I have any interest in, but we all know we really want the gear.
For those looking to start archeology, a couple important tips:
- Do it now, they’re making leveling even longer in patch 4.0.6
- After 100 skill you don’t get anymore skill points for leveling, so don’t solve any of your finds prior to that skill level, in 4.0.6 it seem they’re lowering the number to 50. So at least head to 100 prior to the patch dropping.
- They’re also limiting the amount of fragments you can collect to 200 per race. Each solve takes a minimum of 35 fragments, rares solves up to 150 fragments. Some people were saving all the fragments of the race they wanted loot from (the 2h sword is from troll), in order to only solve that race once they were high enough to find the item. This won’t work after 4.0.6 either.
- Unless you have a real preference of which toon gets pets/mounts/achievements, level this profession on your fastest character. Any toon with 310 flying, paladins for aura, druids for quick flight form, etc. The faster you can move the faster you get to dig sites and to the survey points
- A decent guide/explanation of the profession can be found HERE.
Daily Thoughts: Ret Gets Buffed in Patch 4.0.6
The above chart was featured in a WoW insider Scattered Shots article, you can see the full article HERE.
Notice retribution at the very bottom of the raiding dps specs. Now, this doesn’t include the traditionally low raiding performance “pvp” specs such as subtlety rogues, but ret pallies are still easily 25% below the top performing dps spec and also lower than the next lowest by almost 1,000 dps. Naturally, I’d love to run around topping the meters, but balance at least is much preferred to the current state of affairs. Did we paladins despair though? Of course not! We knew at some point the useless mastery would be reforged into something we wanted, at least a little, and boost our dps. Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom (is always wisdom when they’re buffing your class right?), also buffed our bread and butter attack, Crusader Strike. Check out the paladin class changes.
Paladins
- The mana costs of Blessing of Might and Blessing of Kings have been increased by approximately 217%, making them roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.
- Crusader Strike weapon damage percent has been increased to 135%, up from 115%.
- Divine Plea now lasts for 9 seconds, down from 15. It grants 4% mana per tick, instead of 2%, for a total of 12% mana, up from 10%.
Talent specializations
Retribution
- Divine Purpose: The chance for applicable abilities to generate Holy Power has been reduced to 7/15%, down from 20/40%, but instead of generating 1 Holy Power, the next applicable ability used consumes no Holy Power and acts as if the paladin has 3 Holy Power.
- Hand of Light (Mastery): A percentage of the damage done by Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm is done as additional Holy damage.
- Repentance is no longer broken from damage done by Censure (Seal of Truth).
- Glyphs
- Glyph of Divine Plea now adds 6% mana, for a total of 18% over 9 seconds.
The two biggest changes we have here are the 20% more base damage to crusader strike and our mastery changing. Mastery is now a passive holy damage buff to key attacks and our old Divine Purpose talent has become the same as what Mastery was. Depending on what this percentage ends up being, we could see a very significant boost to damage. This mastery also gives blizzard an easy knob from which to tune our DPS if it’s ever too low or too high. Holy paladins are also probably a little excited about the slight buff to divine plea which provides an extra 2% mana (3% talented) over a shorter time span.
I’m really excited to see ret damage come up to par with our other dps pals and for the first time was considering copying my toon over to a test realm to see the changes first hand before they went live, alas, the page isn’t currently loading. Maybe there’s a bunch of other enthused paladins clogging up the internet.
The rest of the 4.0.6 patch notes can be viewed HERE.